The risk of nuclear war between the US and Russia

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > The risk of nuclear war between the US and Russia

Main Paineframe: Oct 27, 2010

axeil posted:

I also like that instead of calling the opposite of "No First Use" "First Use" (AKA "We Will Totally Nuke You") they call it "Defensive Use Only"

But yeah the Samson Option is one of the most hosed up nuclear strategies out there. It's basically "if our existence is threatened we will nuke everyone nearby including possibly ourselves with the primary goal being killing everyone and not the destruction of military targets". It's a suicidal version of Massive Retaliation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massive_retaliation

Also kind of chilling that the Israeli government all but threatened the US government with implementing it during the Yom Kippur War if the US didn't send supplies.

edit: Also would we be able to make this the general nuclear/chemical/biological weapon proliferation and policy thread?

I've never seen any credible support for the allegation that the "Samson Option" involved nuking a bunch of major countries in an attempt to destroy the world. All claims to that effect, as far as I can tell, ultimately come from one of three types of sources: writers with no real knowledge of Israel nuclear policies writing grandiose nationalistic fantasies about taking revenge on the world for a second Holocaust, anti-Semites and neo-Nazis who say it's one of the lynchpins of a Jewish conspiracy to either control or destroy the world, and conspiracy theorists who say it's one of the lynchpins of a Jewish conspiracy to either control or destroy the world. I've never seen even a trace of that description of the Samson Option in more reputable sources, which generally treat the Samson option as a standard nuclear deterrent (i.e., threatening to nuke the attacker if it looks like they're going to lose a defensive war).

# ¿ Jan 20, 2017 21:11

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# ¿ May 14, 2024 09:29

Main Paineframe: Oct 27, 2010

axeil posted:

Apologies if it came off like that, what I meant by "nuke a bunch of countries" was "nuking the countries attacking Israel". It does appear there is some vagueness about what that entails and whether say, an occupied Israeli city would be considered a valid target.

Sorry, I guess I misinterpreted you. Usually when the Samson Option gets brought up as somehow different from regular nuclear deterrence, that's what people are talking about, and someone who just glances over the Wikipedia page might not notice the poor sourcing.

# ¿ Jan 20, 2017 21:43

Main Paineframe: Oct 27, 2010

axeil posted:

Yeah I can see why it could appear like that. Most of my eyebrow raising at it is that, unlike everyone else's nuclear deterrence strategy Israel's is secret since they don't admit they have nuclear weapons, which is why you can get a lot of this telephone whispering. Also that in all the media I've seen discussing it, they never seem to know if enemy-occupied but de jure Israeli territory is a legitimate target. I mean, I would hope it isn't, but since we can't get confirmation it's a bit unnerving.

I'd assume it depends on the severity of the situation, what kinds of weapons are in Israel's arsenal, and the objective of the strike. Obviously, no country really wants to rain down radioactive fallout on any territory they expect to keep after the war, but tactical nuclear weapons are mostly good for shooting at where the enemy are, rather than where they aren't. Strategic strikes would likely be aimed at the enemy countries' cities in hopes of inflicting so much damage to the country that it forces a quick peace agreement.

# ¿ Jan 20, 2017 22:59

Main Paineframe: Oct 27, 2010

SeANMcBAY posted:

The Doomsday Clock has been set at two and a half minutes to midnight. The closest it's ever been since 1953.

It reminds me a lot of when Obama got the Nobel Peace Prize, and we all know how disappointing that ended up being, so I wouldn't necessarily attach too much weight to this.

# ¿ Jan 26, 2017 23:35

Main Paineframe: Oct 27, 2010

Shibawanko posted:

I guess what I'm mostly wondering about is the actual extent of the fallout, assuming the entire nuclear arsenals of the US and Russia were to be detonated in mostly airbursts, would the fallout be at all survivable in some places?

Sure it would gently caress everything up, knock out electrical grids with the EMP, coat the land in fallout, trigger refugee floods and massively raise the risk of cancer, but would it be actual extinction? People have survived in the Chernobyl exclusion zone for years too, after all. Unless you are directly hit by a warhead (fairly unlikely unless you live in a big city or near a target), isn't there something you can do so you can go on living in whatever is left after the exchange? Or are you really serious that it would be total extinction?

What if you live in the southern hemisphere far removed from any of the superpowers, say in Mauritius or New Zealand or Patagonia or something? What about animal and plant life? A lot of fictional accounts of a nuclear exchange are written from the perspective of an American or British city dweller who have the most to fear, the rest of the world is usually not mentioned in fiction (I'm thinking of Threads or the Fallout games and stuff).

Honestly, no one really knows. There's a wide range of guesses, but that's all. There's precedent for material from isolated events going global (such as the Year Without A Summer, caused by a volcanic eruption and noted for altering the appearance of sunsets worldwide), but when you get into asking about the severity of the nuclear winter and the lethality of the fallout, its not like we've got tons of real-life data recorded about what happens in a real all-out nuclear war. All the research is based on simulations, and there are a fair amount of assumptions in those simulations because no one's ever dropped twenty nukes on a major city just to see what happens to the air currents or how the fires behave.

# ¿ Feb 5, 2017 18:09

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# ¿ May 14, 2024 09:29

Main Paineframe: Oct 27, 2010

Dante80 posted:

welp

Report: Trump Denounces Nuclear Arms Control Treaty to Putin
http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2017/02/11/report-trump-putin-call/

President Donald Trump in his first phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin denounced a treaty that caps U.S. and Russian deployment of nuclear warheads, according to a report.

Trump told Putin that the treaty, known as New START, was one of several bad deals negotiated by the Obama administration, according to a report by Reuters.

Unnamed sources said that Trump did not know what the treaty was, and had paused to ask his aides in an aside what it was, according to the report. White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer told reporters on Thursday that Trump understood the topic, but had wanted an opinion from an aide.

�It wasn�t like he didn�t know what was being said. He wanted an opinion on something,� Spicer said.

The treaty requires Russia and the United States to lower the number of deployed strategic nuclear warheads to 1,550 or less by 2018. It also limits deployed land- and submarine-based missiles, and nuclear-capable bombers.

In the phone call, Putin suggested extending New START, which is set to expire in 2021, the sources told Reuters.

Trump had criticized the treaty during a 2016 presidential debate, saying Russia had �outsmarted� the U.S. with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Critics view the agreement as one-sided, requiring deep cuts in the U.S. nuclear arsenal and abandoning missile defense in Europe.

Trump had also tweeted, as president-elect, �The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes.�

Supporters of the treaty argue that the end of the treaty could lead to a new arms race.

�New START has unquestionably made our country safer, an opinion widely shared by national security experts on both sides of the aisle,� Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (NH) said in a statement.

A mutual agreement can extend the treaty�s provisions for another five years.

The original agreement, known as START, was renewed in 2010 by then-President Obama, and went into effect in 2011, according to CNN.

It aims to cut the number of nuclear weapons that the U.S. and Russia could deploy by about one-third. It would limit a maximum of 700 deployed intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarines and bombers, and a total of 1,500 warheads.

Going back to the original Reuters article, the sourcing on this story seems kind of dubious - it comes from "two U.S. officials and one former U.S. official", two of whom heard it from other people who had read the notes of the call and one of whom heard it from other people.

# ¿ Feb 14, 2017 00:39

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > The risk of nuclear war between the US and Russia